Tolls For Thee

Only two things in life are lofty: ambitions and lofts.

And maybe an EastEnders character, but don't quote me on that.

***

I wouldn't say I'm a particularly morbid person, but I do sometimes visualise my own death.

I don't think that's a strange thing to do. At some point, surely everyone must wonder when, where, how or if they're going to die. Will you be old or young? Will it be fast or slow? Disease? Accident? Will you be ready for the end, or will it take you by surprise?

Who can tell?

I think I've worked out my most likely cause of death.

All of the evidence points to me dashing my brains out against the wall of a toilet cubicle at work.

I've considered the variables, I've factored in my health and lifestyle, my genetic inheritance, my hobbies, my behaviour, my environment and my generation, and it definitely seems the most likely outcome. I will hurl my own skull at the tiles until I'm battered into lifelessness.

Here's my thinking: I'm generally unhappy at work, but I don't own a gun. I'm much too considerate and too shy to make a big show of it, so I would have to be somewhere private.

The main thing that makes the toilet cubicle such a likely venue is that, on every journey from my desk to the toilet, I inevitably humiliate myself.

The humiliation always relates to my interaction with any colleagues that I might see on the way. I'll usually smile in a weird way, stare for a long time, get in their way, make a little stupid laugh, do a grin, fail to make eye contact, engage in an aborted "hello", trip over my own back, accidentally grope them, or walk into a noticeboard.

By the time I reach the toilet, I've accrued enough self-loathing to make dashing my brains out seem ideal.

The only thing that makes me doubt my conclusion is that dashing your own brains out must be quite difficult. You need to do it with enough force to kill yourself, but you don't want to knock yourself unconscious before the job is completed.

I reckon I could do it, though.

The benefit of dying in the toilet is that it would probably be easier to clean than if I was in a carpeted room.

The down side is that the men's toilet only has one cubicle, so any male colleagues in need of a sealed lavatorial environment would have to go to another floor.

On the other hand, it might be chicken pox.

***

Fact: more sandcastles are built each year than actual castles.

It's not fair. The terminology has got to change.

Sandcastles should be known simply as "castles" and castles should be "masonrycastles". It's only fair.

In Britain, hockey is hockey, and ice hockey is ice hockey. That's because we have more grass than we do pucks and such.

In North America, hockey is called "field hockey" and ice hockey is hockey. In North America, this makes sense. To anyone outside of North America, it is an abomination.

But sandcastles are more numerous than masonrycastles WORLDWIDE.

I have no statistics to support this claim, but it must be true. I've built more than five sandcastles in my life, but not a single masonrycastle.

It's all about economy of phrasing.

The English language is constantly evolving. This evolution is driven by usage.

For example, the coccyx is so named because it is less common than the number "six". It's also spelled differently, to make the distinction all the more sharp.

"Knuckledusters" are less common than regular dusters, and accordingly have an appropriate prefix.

So, the next time you're building a masonrycastle, refer to it as such. Otherwise I'll have to kick it over and risk losing a flip flop.

***

Every time I think about going back on Twitter again, I read Chortle's "Tweets of the week" and get thoroughly depressed.

All Twitter jokes are terrible.You can hear their clanking mechanics a mile away.

My jokes are great of course, but you don't want to dive into a pool of sharks just because you're dressed like a dolphin.